Oh no , I didn't do it ..

I have a few employees I oversee ..


And although they are all adults , something gets ruined almost daily it seems ..( hourly lol) ..and no one ever takes responsibility..

Always someone else did it or , it was like that ..

How can people be so careless constantly , over and over .. Another wrecked tailgate on a pickup this morning ,

"I showed up and it looked like that so I thought I better call and tell you "

right


Venting over

Sorry but that seems to be the norm with people.


I always try to fix my mistakes so I don't have to confess but if I can't fix it, I would rather take my lumps than be a liar.

Believe me I feel your pain.
In 25 years of having employees, I supplied all the tools, equipment etc.
NEVER ONCE did I yell at them or take it out of their paychecks when something was broken or damaged.
My response(s) were 1. How did it happen ? 2. How do we prevent it from happening again ? 3. Lets get it repaired or I'll get one on order.
If it was a customers car that got damaged (only a few times fortunately) The same discussion as above, I would then contact the customer, discuss it, and ask how they wanted to handle it.
And they knew this policy when they hired on. In all cases the issue was never brought up again.
There were a few times when I got the "I didnt' do it" from all and that WOULD make me go BALLISTIC!!!

It has now been almost 5 months since the LAST employee left and I am still finding broken tools, hidden damaged items. INFURIATING!!!! NO MORE EMPLOYEES PERIOD!! I paid them extremely well, regular bonuses, bailed them out of multiple situations (most without repayment required) and I still got lied to, stolen from, deceived in more ways than I can count.
Did I mention, I'm DONE with Employees ?

Just one of several reasons I never had employees when I opened my shop. I used to be one, so I knew what some of the guys I worked with pulled pretty much on a daily basis.

I can't imagine how bad its gotten over the last year or two! Just getting people to show up when they are suppose to is a major accomplishment, but then expecting them to actually work to, seems like asking for a miracle. Simply because some slime ball shows up on time, every time they are suppose to, it has to be pretty hard firing those slime balls that don't deserve a job.

Where I work there are some employees that treat equipment worse than a red haired step-child. I'm a maintenance man so it's my job to repair this crap but sometimes no matter how good of a repair I do it seems like they find new ways to break it.

I’ve got a bud that owns four plumbing wholesale companies. The tailgates last about six months. I told him he has two choices. 1. He can take the gates off the first day and sell them. 2. He can ( on the first day as well), line all of his employees up, remove the gate and beat it, himself, with a sledge hammer, run over it with a forklift and just general destroy it in front of their eyes. Then he can say, “ ok that’s taken care of so get back to work”! His latest employee of about 6 months, just fill his gas hemi Dodge up with Diesel and drove it till it stopped. He could not figure out what happened unti it ruined the engine.

The operations superintendent at a power plant I used to work at had the motto, "It's operation's job to break things and maintenance's job to fix them". How well do you think the operators treated the equipment with that attitude?

Let's look at this from the employee side for a moment using my current job as an example.

I have a company van for my use. I'm not in it all day everyday, but it does see some use everyday. It's a 2014. (company bought the van in 2019 with 20K on it...)

The company WILL NOT fix ANYTHING on it unless it's absolutely necessary, and even then it almost takes an act of God.

Currently, the van has suspension issues. It's a known defect from when it was new, but its out of warranty, so they won't fix it. It's gotten to the point that it's affecting how the van drives and handles. Meh, no big deal, right? The oil hasn't been changed in over 5K miles, and it 'looses' coolant somewhere even though there's no visible leak. There's a lot of construction around here, so the van gets filthy. I took it upon myself to wash the van one day. I was told for doing it was stupid. I did it because I want to create a positive image when I roll up to a customers business.

In two days the inspection is up. It will not pass because the check engine light is on for a few reasons. I've been telling them about this since APRIL, and nothing has been done. I'm not driving a vehicle with expired tags.

So, ask me how am I supposed to care when the company owner obviously doesn't?

And don't get me started on the forklift they bought new two years ago...............

Quote

So, ask me how am I supposed to care when the company owner obviously doesn't?

I can assure you that was not the case with my business or employees, actually it was the opposite. In addition, when they requested a tool or equipment to make there jobs easier / more productive, it was discussed with them and sometimes the other employees. If it was felt that the cost was justified after discussing it, it was purchased.
BTW I have a lot of requested tools that were never used or maybe used once. I will be having one he--uva a sale at some point

Where I work is an ESOP. We are all employee owners so that helps with accountability. I do maintenance on things at our location like I own them..because I do!

I even go to the lengths of fixing items that the truck lines damage so we can resell them and not just scrap. (HVAC items).

We are more profitable than ever and I benefit from that. It takes selecting the right employees but this seems to work really well and is the closest thing to being self employed (without all the risk and costs) that I've encountered.

I spent some time driving a forklift in a magazine factory which means lots of pedestrian traffic. I often said I wouldn't trust the in house mechanic to fix a sandwich. One lift had absolutely horrible brakes and we mostly dealt with it because locking it out of service weekly wasn't getting it any attention. We eventually started locking it out as soon as it was put back in service and that attracted management attention. When the wheels finally got pulled even the metal web part of the brake shoe had been worn away and yes the drum was beyond toast. All the lifts had like 70,000+ hours on them and were on their 2nd or 3rd engine rebuild. The bum let one sit around the shop for months until management climbed up him to put it back together. I was driving it at a couple days after being put back in to service, noticed what I thought was a cardboard slip sheet jambed underneath it. Went to pull it out and found a few oil mats cable tied to the bottom of the transmission.

Good day today ..

One guy put gasoline in a diesel pickup ,, and another guy turned too sharp and hit a t- pole and tore a trailer all up .. ( not his 1st neither ) .. been a another rough week

Fleet maintenance always gives you great stories.
1.Guy plowing snow in a brand new Chevy pickup (<800 miles) catches a fencepost and opens the side of the truck like a can opener from 4" behind the headlight all the way to the taillight. "They want it clear right to the post so I didn't have a choice." How about ONE swipe with a shovel?!?!
2. Guy has to thaw the padlock on a gate, uses a propane torch, then throws the torch on the seat of the truck and walks away. When we pulled the torch off the front seat of the burned out hulk the next day, the valve was still on. Only thing I could salvage of a 25k mile truck was the lift gate. BONUS: City gave the guy ONE day off without pay for negligently destroying a $40k truck, and his union filed a grievance saying he should have only received a letter of reprimand.
3. Summer temps (mostly HS/College kids) had to haul short dumpster trailers around to the parks as part of their job. They destroyed so many bed sides that after a couple years, whenever I'd buy a new pickup, I'd buy a steel-deck flatbed to put on in place of the pickup box and sell the boxes brand new (for about the cost of the flatbed).
4. Guy's job for the day: Hook an arrow board to the back of that pickup, follow the hot-patch crew so when they're out shoveling asphalt they don't get hit by idiot drivers not paying attention. What does he do? before 9:00 am he rear-ends the hot-patch trailer, tales out the front clip on his truck, smashes the hot-box, and bends the hitch on the truck pulling IT. Nearly $10k in damage and he claims "I didn't see the brake lights".
5. Handicap bus driver center-punches a light pole in the WalMart parking lot. When I said she should be fired, her boss says, "She couldn't see. What was she supposed to do?" I said, "STOP!!! If she can't see a light pole with a concrete base, how could she see grandma in a wheelchair or a 5-year-old?!?"

I've got stories for days from those guys...

The current worker has a disdain for working and for employers. I see on my local Face Book informed page- a company- any and all companies will post "Hiring all shifts $15 $16 an hour to start. Full time or part time." And immediately the guys and gals start posting- "Yea whatever- they make millions of dollars per year and they will pay me only $15 per hour. No thanks." There is an automatic engrained view that an employer is an adversary and even an enemy. So when these disgruntled people do get hired they will NOT use caution or be careful during their employment.

That last bit about the idiot who filled a Hemi Dodge with diesel fuel, reminds me of a former co-worker. I worked for a company that was affliated with Chrysler, to test drive pre-production cars/trucks. One shift I worked, a guy was driving a Ram 2500 quad cab 4X4 diesel pickup. One a stop to re-fuel, he filled the entire tank with 87 octane. Mind you, this was a pre-production test vehicle, but still brand new.
He had realized what he did after he was done pumping! His lead driver had to call it in and a flat bed had to be sent out. The truck was not started, but obviously the ENTIRE fuel system had to be flushed out.
The guy was fired on the spot, when he got back to the shop.

I thought gasoline and diesel used different nozzles and they would not fit in a vehicle not designed for that type of fuel.

This former co-worker was an idiot...who found a way to fill up that new truck with gas instead of diesel fuel....I didn't see him do it, although I did see the truck being flat bedded back to the shop because of his blunder.

The nozzle on a diesel pump is larger, so the filler neck opening would be larger. Unleaded gas has a slim nozzle. Diesel nozzle won't fit in an unleaded vehicle filler tube. It will work the other way around, gas into a diesel vehicle.

I wonder how you dispose of all that ruined fuel?

In the Air Force, wed find something with a multi-fuel engine and dump it in that tank. When I ran a vehicle fleet, we had out own fuel pumps, and the key cards wouldn't turn the wrong pumps on...and the idiots would field-fuel stuff with the wrong product, usually mowers. We'd pump it into a drum and wait until we got a 10,000 gallon delivery of unleaded, then dump it in the underground tank. Ten gallons of gas/diesel mix in 10,000 isn't enough to make any difference...

I'm surprised someone hasn't posted this by now.

I have another version of that on my shop wall as a troubleshooting flow chart,
One of the steps asks what was the last thing you screwed with?
More than once that has led to the source of the problem LOL

I used to tell my guys "treat company property like it was your own".

Then I saw how bad some of them tore up their own stuff. Some of them drive brand new $50-$60-$70K new trucks and in a year they have beat them all to he**.